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METRO VANCOUVER -- With Port Moody in their rear-view mirrors, Belcarra residents start to exhale. They’re almost there, almost home.

Belcarra — population 676 — is the smallest municipality in the region and seems more like a Gulf Island community than a part of Metro Vancouver.

It’s spectacularly beautiful. It’s hard to look anywhere and not have a stunning view of mountains and water. It’s like Deep Cove without the hassle of crossing a bridge to get there and without the amenities.

Even though housing prices start at more than a million dollars, there are no sewer or water lines. They’re coming soon. Until then, it’s septic tanks and wells, which for some residents means always boiling water before drinking it as a safety precaution.

There are no schools, no grocery stores or restaurants, no stop lights and no street lights. If you run out of milk, you have to get in your car and drive about 10 minutes. There’s a TransLink bus route, but service is infrequent. If you have to commute to Vancouver, it’s an hour by car or 22 minutes on the West Coast Express.

What Belcarra does have is more than its fair share of peace, quiet and nature.

“We live in the middle of a park. Belcarra is really just walking trails with houses,” says Liisa Wilder. “I can’t imagine not living here. The hiking trails, the peace, the water and the people. Those are the best things.”

With such big lots and with all the homes facing the water, she says, it’s possible to never see your neighbours.

“If you want to meet people, you have to get involved in the community or get a dog,” says Liisa, who moved here nine years ago with her husband, Graham. She chose getting involved over getting a dog and now heads CRAB — the Community and Recreation Association of Belcarra.

Every morning, rain, snow or sunshine, Liisa and her three friends — Susan Brain, Pat Lawson and Sheila Irwin — go for a 10K power walk through the park.

I’m spared the power walk because there’s so much to see and so much to to talk about with the Real Housewives of Belcarra, as they call themselves. Mountain and water views aside, there’s much to see other than hedges, wide driveways and multiple parking spots with the occasional glimpse of a home’s back door.

Water has been the community’s focal point from the time the Tsleil-Waututh arrived here and, until the road was paved in the mid-1960s, the easiest way to get here. It’s more likely to see neighbours on the water than on the land — either in a boat or on skis. (Susan and her husband moved here to be closer to the Vancouver Water Ski Club, where both they and their children still ski and compete.)

The Real Housewives of Belcarra take me down the hill to the water. At a group dock where the Wilders’ boat is tied up, Susan collects some mussels to bait two crab traps before we continue along the street until we come to the park trail.

As we snack on huckleberries and salmonberries, they tell me about bear sightings and missing cats, about Tom Selleck renting a house there for several months when he was filming here and a neighbour who saw a fawn being born just below her window.

The trail splits. One part goes to Cozy Cove and Jug Island Beach, a favourite destination for kayakers coming from Deep Cove, which is almost directly across Indian Arm, but we head to the Belcarra Bay picnic area where, on the weekends, you can rent kayaks and eat “the best fish and chips,” according to Liisa. Unfortunately, we weren’t there on the weekend and had to be content admiring another spectacular view from the dock and peering down at starfish.

We head back along a different trail that flanks the beach.

“You have to be a bit eccentric to live here,” says Pat, who has lived here the longest and raised her children here. The others don’t contradict her. Instead they rhyme off what you need to live here. Wine, friends, good shoes, a dog (although Liisa says there enough around that you can just borrow one), a good book and a boat.

At the dock, the traps are pulled up teeming with crab. All but one — a large male — go back into the ocean. It’s illegal to keep females and undersized ones.

When that’s done, we board the Wilders’ recently purchased 30-foot power boat. With Graham at the helm, we head up Indian Arm past Farrer Cove, where they point out a doctor’s home with a slalom course in front. He water-skis most mornings before going to work.

We pass kayakers and some crab fishers. We pass Raccoon Island and Twin Islands Marine Park, turning back only after we’ve taken a look at the abandoned Buntzen Lake hydro station. We skirt past Jug Island, Cosy Cove and take a different look at Belcarra Bay before heading back to the dock.

From Belcarra, the views from the land are spectacular. The trails are great. And it’s a bonus that the village is within walking distance to Buntzen Lake.

But it’s while on the boat on the salt water that each of them takes me aside.

“This is what Belcarra is about,” they say.

“This is why we live here.”

dbramham@vancouversun.com

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